My poor long-suffering spouse. At 1:22 am he called over the deck railing from the bedroom to the kitchen where I was and told me that I needed to turn off the detail sander I was merrily cleaning the counters with. I felt horrible. He usually sleeps right through that sort of stuff.

I am a night owl and when I have a lot on my mind I clean. We had a running joke with one of my doctors who asked how clean my house was, not how I was doing. When my mom died and I finished closing out her estate I returned home a little more than stressed. Within a few weeks each piece of wood furniture was polished to a high shine and all of our wood floors were refurbished. Thankfully I did not go for the full refinish on the floors or it would have been a nightmare for both of us. Those floor sander things are a whole lot louder than a finish sander.

I used hand tools for the wood refurbishing. All of that hand rubbing furniture and floors was a lot better than a stiff drink. Unfortunately, he had to put up with coming down in the morning to get his coffee and finding that I had moved all of the furniture to one side of the room and had most of the floor cordoned off. You could get to the kitchen if you just made a little hop to the left where the stairs meet the floor. There was a handrail after all. I allow as how doing the hop back upstairs with coffee in hand is a bit harder. I was careful after that not to leave such a difficult trail.

Before I found out what a ruckus I was making and how much I was disturbing the peace, I was humming to myself thinking that I had found the perfect kitchen tool–my Porter-Cable professional lithium battery detail sander. I had the sander in the kitchen to polish out some dings in the old butcher block in the kitchen of this GSH. I had some terrycloth covered sponges I had been using on the cabinet refinishing I was doing (yep, some extra energy this week!) and saw a clean one. My sander has Velcro to hold the sanding pads. Hm…terry, Velcro, need things polished….. As you can imagine it worked right off. Off I went to polish the tile. As I was polishing I watched things just disappear off the counter, not things like spoons and forks, the vibration of this sander is not that bad. What I saw was the little bits of goo that accumulate in kitchens between the cracks and around the sink and on those smooth cook tops magically disappearing.

Wow, next Thanksgiving I am going serve a turkey and clean up with a detail sander. Who knew?

Who would have known unless you were moving and stuff was every-which-way getting packed. How probable is it to have terry cloth painting materials AND a detail sander in the same room, particularly when that room is the kitchen? From my experience, moving makes the improbable, probable.

The improbable has ruled today. It was improbable that my 9 am appointment that was just too much stuff for one day when you are moving dematerialized. A lawyer did not call me. I did not forget, they did. Or I got the date wrong. Nonetheless no conference call, more time. We went to the doctors and she was exactly on time, no waiting. We went to the pharmacy and no waiting. We went to the post-office and only one bill. We back to the GSH and the probable became real. Ugh.

It is probable that I will never cease to be amazed at how much work it is to get ready for movers to come pack. The goal is for you to have a “stress free” move. Yup. Once you get ready for the descending hoard who pack faster than you can stay ahead, things go well. It is getting ready for the hoard. Don’t get me wrong. I am delighted that they are descending. Boy, am I delighted. Still, by 1:30 am I have my closet and my office yet to finish off. Every other room is ready. The closet is close to being finished but right now it looks like it needs some Pepto-bismal. I can feel the packers them breathing down my neck. I hope I can distract them from my closet with a lot of antique dishes and Waterford crystal to pack. That ought to keep them busy long enough for me to attend to my closet, my desk, my tools, my…Oh My.

Perhaps when my spouse wakes up I can use my detail sander to clean up my closet.